Homeless in America's tent cities

Kadee Ingram, 28, holds her son Sean, 2, at SHARE/WHEEL Tent City 3 outside Seattle, Washington state. Ingram lost her job, and soon afterwards her partner Renee lost hers too.

"It got (to) the point where we couldn't get a job fast enough and we lost our apartment," Ingram said. "Coming here, we really like it, being outside especially, we feel safe. We wish we would have known about it sooner."

12 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Jammie and her partner Shane Savage, 41, pose outside their tent.

For years, Jammie Nichols struggled with a drug habit that left the Florida mother reeling from blackouts, seizures, depression and poverty - and a decision to give one of her children up for adoption.

Then a friend told her about Tent City 3, a peer-run homeless encampment in the Seattle area with ties to social welfare programs. The police patrolled sporadically but left occupants largely alone, and volunteers often dropped off hot meals.

12 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

In June, Nichols bought a bus ticket and arrived in Seattle broke, and four months later, she had a steady boyfriend, had kicked her drug habit and had been elected to the camp's executive committee, she said.

"I've really come out of my shell," she said over a bowl of rice inside a tarpaulin-covered communal dining area. "Today I filled out my first application for housing.”

11 Oct 2015. Olympia, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Sharon Wilson, 59, and other residents of Camp Quixote tent city moved into Quixote Village in Olympia, Washington on Christmas Eve 2013. The Village has 30 tiny cottages, a vegetable garden and a community building.

Despite the benefits tent cities often provide occupants, and although American cities are grappling with a chronic shortage of affordable housing for the poor and budget constraints on social programs, many municipalities across the United States are clamping down on homeless encampments.

Citywide anti-camping bans have increased by roughly 60 percent since 2011, according to a 2014 report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP), a research group. The U.S. government tallied more than half a million people living on the streets on a one-night count this year, a quarter of them children.

8 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Nearly all of the dozens of people living in sanctioned tent cities interviewed spoke of having found a far more stable, safe, goal-oriented life inside a tight-knit community than they did living on the streets or in a traditional shelter.

"The unique thing about the camp is the sense of the community," said Matt Mercer, a former tent city dweller who now works at Mesilla Valley Community of Hope in New Mexico. "When you are in the shelter system, you don't see community; people are all just in survival mode."

6 Oct 2015. Las Cruces, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Matt Mercer is a one-time resident of a camp settlement.

Life is not without its tests, though. The roughly 60 residents of Tent City must work unpaid shifts doing security and clean-up, attend weekly meetings, live without heat, and abstain from liquor, drugs and violence.

6 Oct 2015. Las Cruces, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Camp Hope in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Tracking tent cities is difficult, but the NLCHP identified more than 100 across 41 U.S. states from 2008-2013, though few were officially sanctioned. Today there are roughly a dozen legal encampments nationwide, with scores of others existing on the margins or facing eviction.

Authorities have cleared well-established camps this year in Honolulu; Washington, D.C.; and, most recently, Boise, Idaho.

"It's become unhealthy, unsafe and really unsustainable," Boise Mayor Dave Bieter said earlier this month when he ordered police to evict and clear a camp with some 130 dwellers.

16 Nov 2015. Washington, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Owen Makel, 65, who has been homeless for nearly 14 years and has lived at the camp for four months, sits by his tent between the Watergate and Whitehurst Freeway in Washington D.C. "You have to understand this: we people as homeless have lives, just like you all have lives. We don't want to be out on the street but we don't have an alternative. People have no other place to go."

That came two months after a U.S. judge dismissed a 2009 lawsuit brought by homeless people convicted under Boise's anti-camping laws, despite a U.S. Justice Department brief backing the plaintiffs.

"We aren't going to have anywhere to go," said JoJo Valdez, 40, who said she had been among those sobbing as police cleared the camp. "There are places down by the river where people are hiding out."

8 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Oregon cities Portland and Eugene, and Olympia in Washington, are among the few municipalities that have allowed encampments. Clearwater, Florida, also has the church-backed Pinellas Hope village.

Seattle has voted to permit three tent cities, with Mayor Ed Murray declaring homelessness a "full-blown crisis" following the death this year of 66 homeless people on the streets or in illegal campsites, and a 21 percent jump in the King County homeless population since 2014.

13 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Gary Dumo, 36, shows his tattoos while working security at the homeless tent encampment Nickelsville in Seattle. "I'd love to see myself in a home, with working power, electricity, walls and air-conditioned. I'm pretty sure there are more people though that need a place to stay."

By month's end, there could be at least five well-established encampments on private and public lands in the Seattle area, including two on city property near downtown.

Some tent cities, such as Eugene's Opportunity Village, have been upgraded to "micro houses," essentially one-window sheds.

13 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

One such shantytown, on a hillside in Seattle, has given Matt Hannahs and his 6-year-old son refuge from soaring rents and the onset of winter.

"Hopefully within a year from now we'll be settled into a new place and Devin will have a regular school that he can go to, instead of having to move around to different schools," Hannahs said. "Hopefully by then we'll have housing."

Stanley Smith, 60, from Alabama, who has been roaming around since 15 and arrived at the camp in 2011, sits outside his tent at Camp Hope.

5 Oct 2015. Las Cruces, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Residents walk at night at Camp Hope.

9 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Tents are seen at Tent City 4 outside Seattle, Washington.

9 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Stephan Schleicher, 31, poses in front of his tent at Tent City 4.

9 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

A bible and ashtray filled with cigarettes are seen at Tent City 4.

12 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Kalaniopua Young, 32, originally from Hawaii: “I had an apartment but this is a choice I made to live here. I was lonely and depressed living in an apartment. I feel much better here with the social ineratctions and friendships. There is a direct democracy here with immediate results that differ from traditional bureaucracy.”

12 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Emma Savage opens her sixth birthday card given to her by dad Robert Rowe, 42, a day labourer who had just returned from a 12-hour-work day to Tent City 3.

8 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Aaron Ervin, 50: ”Tent City has been a saving grace for me, a place for me to refresh and gather my thoughts. While I'm here I want to lead by example and be (a) positive influence on camp. People feel safe here, they are tense from being wrongfully judged from carrying all their bags as being homeless and the camp makes you feel comfortable knowing you have a safe place for your belongings."

8 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

An unsanctioned homeless tent encampment Nickelsville founded in 2008, named after former mayor Greg Nickels, consists of homeless men, women and children living in tents and single-room shelters erected on public property in downtown Seattle.

12 Oct 2015. Seattle, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Daniel Paul Oakes, 23, works on a bicycle in his single-room structure at Nickelsville. “ I have been homeless for three and a half years and been at Nickelsville for about 10 months. For the most part everybody gets along. I'd l like to have a job that would get me out of here."

16 Nov 2015. Washington, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

James Bannister, 38: "Tent city is the idea that you can be in a place that is peaceful and quiet and away from everybody else, where you don't have any violence, no problems or none of the above. I'm on the list for housing but have been on the list for 20 years."

16 Nov 2015. Washington, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Lovenia Evans, who is pregnant, smokes a cigarette by her tent between the Watergate and Whitehurst Freeway. "This is my second week in this tent, it’s better to be here than laying on the street or sidewalk. I'm pregnant and they would like to me to come off the street,” she said.

16 Nov 2015. Washington, United States. Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Clyde Burgit and his wife Helen Burgit, who have been at the camp for two weeks, sit on a mattress near their tent by the Watergate and Whitehurst Freeway in Washington D.C. "Everybody looks out for everybody, this was great and everybody gets along,” said Clyde.